Fired-up Cooking SA @ Food24

OH MY WORD – I’ve been selected!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

I’m on the list for the KZN/Eastern Cape section of the auditions – I’ve got my list of instructions and all that’s left is to RSVP, people, by the 21st.

This is a competition MADE for me. Ultimate Braai Master, YES, I can do this (with the help of my trusty Braai-Master, and hubby, of course).

So I started filling in the entrance form – which was wonderfully fun and light-hearted.  Half-way through, I started doing the math, and realised that 52 days off work to go on tour with Justin Bonello (my cookery-hero) cooking up a storm on fires all over the country just wasn’t going to be possible for either my husband or for me.  My husband has his own engineering/production business with an exciting (and chef-worthy) product about to go to market internationally, and I work in the very busy finance department of a large high school. Six weeks would be diastrous for us both.  So I abandoned my entry. No photos submitted, questions left unanswered, the submit button never clicked.  I put it out of my mind.

One of the questions on the entry form was ‘what sort of food do you cook on the braai’ – my reply was ‘anything – from amarula malva pudding to pizzas on the fire to chocolate banana cake – I’ll tackle anything on the fire.  I am as happy, actually happier, when I am cooking over flames (not gas, people, never gas).

I think it may have been this comment on my entry form that resulted in the organisers emailing me to say that my entry-form had caught their attention anyway, and that I had made it to the auditions.  You can imagine the excitement – the planning – the recipes I went through.  I know exactly what I would cook – I know what I would pack, and how I would set up our camp kitchen on a patch of ground for the day. I know how I would present the food, and I think we would make it through to the next secret day’s events.

BUT – and there-in lies the rub, there-in squats the toad, BUT -  I am already committed to something I cannot wriggle out of on that weekend (trust me, I’ve been scheming).   And if we were to make it through – there’s the problem of the six weeks traveling and cooking for the TV show.

Stay tuned – I will let you know what we decide…….I’m still scheming

Meantime, if you’d like to check out some of the things I cook on a braai-fire, hop over to my blog at www.firedupcookingsa.com and browse around.  See you there!

I was contacted by the food editor of Beeld newspaper a few weeks ago, who wanted to use one of my camp-fire recipes (camp-fire soup, to be exact) for an article on outdoor leisure time.  I was thrilled and said, of course! 

But then the weather warmed up too much for soup, and so I offered to come up with something new for her instead. These lovely savoury bread-rolls, baked straight on the braai-grid, were the result.  They were delicious, served hot and smokey from the fire, with lots of butter.  

For the recipe, please go to Fired Up Cooking SA or click on the photo.  Oh, and they can be baked in the oven too!

I’m still just so horribly busy at work, with deadlines looming faster and scarier each day.  I haven’t really had a chance to find my way around our new blog ‘home’ and even though I have a wordpress site, I have been somewhat lost!!!  But I finally found my dashboard and now I know my way  – oh the relief!!!

Anyway, our holiday is coming up fast, so there will be time for me to cook and bake, and maybe even get to know the new Food24 platform really well! 

I’m missing everyone!!  

Hey it’s Friday, & I have finally joined the blog community.